Thecus Adds First Solid-State Drives to its NAS Compatibility List

Posted on January 29, 2013 11:00 AM by Rob Williams

We’re not sure if this is the beginning to a trend or not, but Thecus isn’t going to take any chances and stand idly by. The company, which specializes in NAS products, has just announced the introduction of an “SSD Segment” to its compatibility list. This list is comprised of drive models that have been verified and given the a-OK by Thecus for operation in its products – essentially, using models on this list means you’ll be getting the best experience possible from a stability stand-point.

While it seems inevitable that SSDs may become a common sight in NAS boxes in the future – thanks to their ability to handle extremely high loads without stalling- their density/$ ratio isn’t currently ideal for most deployments. However, while you may store movies, music and other content on your home NAS, SSDs would be a great fit for environments where many different users need to access the NAS (essentially a server) at once. If today’s SSDs were priced like today’s HDDs and carried the same densities, they’d be an absolute dream to equip in a NAS. Alas, we’re a ways away from that possibility. Of course – it’d also help for 10Gbit/s Ethernet connections to become more mainstream.

Pretty-well Thecus’ entire line-up has had SSD models added to its support list, though its brand choices are a bit odd. For the consumer side, it’s MemoRight models that have gotten the green-light, whereas Hitachi’s SSDs have been approved for enterprise use. Should I be ashamed that I didn’t even realize Hitachi had SSDs? Here’s to hoping more mainstream / common SSD brands are tackled next.